Winter 2017

English

ENG 104 Introduction to Literature: Fiction

Wheeler, Elizabeth

Why do stories matter? In this class we will read novels of childhood and adolescence, both fantasy and realistic, and compare them to the stories that matter in our own lives and families. The novels come from India, England, South Korea, and the U.S., including The Ocean at the End of the Lane, The Inheritance of Loss, I’ll Be Right There, Orleans, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. By the end of the course you should be able to break down the fundamental components of fiction and you will have sharpened your writing skills. As a basic introduction to a major genre in the field of literary studies, this course satisfies the university’s Group Requirement in the Arts and Letters category. It also counts as a lower-division elective in the new (2016) English major.

Gen Ed (A&L); Major II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 104 Introduction to Literature: Fiction

Upton, Corbett

This course offers students a broad introduction to the study of literary fiction. Focusing on the works of major writers, students develop analytical skills that will allow them to think, write, and speak intelligently about fiction. The course addresses basic questions about the nature of prose narrative and the interrelated activities of reading, writing, and interpretation. What is a story, and what role do stories play in our cultural and political lives? What validates a particular interpretation of a literary text, and how do various interpretations contribute to our understanding of a story’s meaning? Narrative technique, point of view, character development, and other elements of fiction are examined in the course. Weekly readings are substantial in scope and difficulty. Students will be tested on course content and will practice close reading and analysis skills in class discussions and writing assignments. As a basic introduction to a major genre in the field of literary studies, this course satisfies the university’s Group Requirement in the Arts and Letters category.

In this class, we will analyze games and interactive fiction (IF) as our shared textual objects. We will examine the ways in which these texts interact with readers/users/players in the (re)creation of narrative, worlds, and identities. We will be focusing primarily on works of fiction from North America between the 1980s and the present by charting the rise of IF and digital games.

As we unpack the genres of IF and games, we will discuss tools to understand and dissect texts, identifying literary concepts and terminology such as narrative, plot, character, and themes, while accounting for the structural, formal and generic qualities of our texts. You will practice employing these terms and concepts in a variety of assignments including response papers, in-class reflections, class discussions, quizzes, and argumentative essays. As a basic introduction a major genre in the field of literary studies, this course satisfies the university’s Group Requirement in the Arts and Letters category. It also counts as a lower-division elective in the new (2016) English major.

Gen Ed (A&L); Major II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 106 Introduction to Literature: Poetry

Wonham, Henry

This course is designed to provide students with a basic understanding of the formal properties of poetry in English. Through careful analysis of poems by major writers, students will be challenged to explain not only what a given poem might mean to its readers, but also how a poem communicates meaning differently than a work of fiction, drama, or some other mode of literary expression. ENG 106 is not a comprehensive introduction to the traditions of English and American poetry; it is, rather, a series of intensive exercises designed to equip students with the analytical tools needed to read, discuss, and write about poetry effectively. Weekly readings are relatively short but extremely demanding, and students will do a substantial amount of critical writing, including formal essays totaling at least 8-10 pages. As a basic introduction to a major genre in the field of literary studies, this course satisfies the university’s Group Requirement in the Arts and Letters category. It also counts as a lower-division elective in the new (2016) English major.

Gen Ed (A&L); Major II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 107 World Literature, Ancient to Medieval

Laskaya, Anne

ENG 107 is the first of a three-part chronological survey of international trends in literature from its archaic and classical origins to the present. The course seeks to give students a glimpse of a global literary history juxtaposing Western and non-Western readings, challenging students to locate ‘classic’ literary works within a global perspective. All works are read in English translation. Weekly readings are substantial in scope and difficulty, and students will compose interpretive essays, totaling at least 8-10 pages. With a comparative focus on various literary traditions, this course satisfies the University’s Multicultural Requirement in the International Cultures category. Offering students a broad introduction to college-level literary studies, ENG 107 also satisfies the university’s Group requirement in the Arts and Letters category. The year-long sequence (107,108, 109) may be taken as a sequence or individually. There are no prerequisites, and no background knowledge of global literary history is expected.

Readings include major texts from the traditions of Western Civilization as well as from non-Western Civilizations, and may include Gilgamesh, the Biblical books of Genesis, Ruth, or Job, Homer’s Odyssey, selections from the Mahabharata (including the Bhagavad-Gita), Asvaghosha’s Buddha-Karita, Qu Yuan’s poem, ‘On Encountering Sorrow’ (Li sao), selections from Sima Qian’s Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), Cai Yan’s ‘Verses Sung to a Tatar Reed Whistle,’ the Qasidahs of Imru’ al-Qays and others, Attar’s account of Rabi’ah al-‘Adawiyyah, selections from A Thousand and One Nights, selections from The Golden Legend, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Gen Ed (A&L); Multicultural; Major I & II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 110 Introduction to Film and Media

Cheney, Zachary

Film and media constitute a world unto themselves. Although this world’s boundaries are highly porous, bleeding into and constantly inflected by the larger cultural constellation, a proper introduction to film and media involves immersion into their distinct world. English 110 offers an initiatory survey into the art of production, the act of watching, and the ways that film and media look back on themselves in their incessant drive to innovate, provoke, and entertain. We will screen films and other media on a weekly basis, with individual and collaborative assignments acting as outlets for students to express their thoughtful handling of the course’s subject matter.

Gen Ed (A&L); Major I & II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 110 Introduction to Film and Media

Seid, Danielle

This course provides an introduction to television studies and the academic study of popular culture. Specifically, we will examine the relationship between American network television, as a crucial source of news and entertainment, and citizenship in the postwar nation. Exploring the politics of representation, we will study how network television, since its popularization in the 1950s through the end of the network era in the 1980s, has represented and powerfully shaped ideas about race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, taste, and other forms of difference, which persist in the contemporary media landscape. Students practice close visual analysis alongside historical inquiry supported by readings in television and popular culture studies.

Gen Ed (A&L); Major I & II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 199 Special Studies: Craft of the Sentence (see ENG 209)

Sayre, Gordon

For winter term Craft of the Sentence is listed under ENG 199. ENG 209 Craft of the Sentence is still in the final process of approval. Once approved, ENG 199 will automatically be converted to appear on student transcripts as ENG 209 Craft of the Sentence.

What happens when digital tools meet literary studies? What can the “digital turn” in literary studies help us to understand about literary history, language, aesthetics, form, cultural networks, adaptation, rhetoric, and the transmission of the written word? In this course you’ll learn how to use digital tools to read and analyze literature. At the same time, we will focus on the ways that literary analysis can help us to evaluate the power of digital tools. As we visualize features of a literary text as printed or electronic texts, word clouds, social networks, maps, and blogs, we’ll consider a host of new ways of reading and understanding literary texts.

The digital tools we study and use in this class will be applied to a selected cluster of literary works about nineteenth-century London. In addition to studying Arthur Morrison’s nineteenth-century realist novel about the East End of London, Child of the Jago, the class will also read the successful blog, Spitalfields Life. The blog focuses on the art, culture, history, and life of Spitalfields, a region in the East End of London with an (in)famous nineteenth-century history. While reading this blog you will also have an opportunity to keep a blog of your own. The combination of reading and writing a blog will create ways of thinking about digital publishing, public literary culture, and this new form of digital research narrative we call, “the blog.”

This course will draw from our knowledge of and experiences with physical research tools (books, articles, encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.) and digital tools to prompt thinking about new e-literary form(s), digital publishing, and the intersection of digital culture and print culture.

This course will draw from our knowledge of and experiences with physical research tools (books, articles, encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.) and the internet to prompt thinking about literary studies, digital publishing, and the intersection of digital culture and literary culture.

Major I & II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 200 Public Speaking as a Liberal Art

Horton, Kathleen

While the primary emphasis of this course will be students’ frequent practice and evaluation of their own public speaking, we will also discuss theories of rhetoric; the identity, characteristics, and relationship of speaker (self) and audience (other); the importance of listening as an aspect of speaking; the role of gender, culture, and context in public discourse; and the common challenges and barriers humans face and overcome when engaged in public speaking. In addition, we will explore ethics and morality as foundational concerns in any arena in which speakers seek the assent of others.

Major I & II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 205 Genre: Tragedy

Peppis, Paul

Genre courses focus on particular genres and forms crucial for the study of English, American, and Anglophone literature and culture and are aimed primarily at English majors. This course on tragedy traces the historical development and transformation of the genre and places strong emphasis on close reading and critical analytic skills. The course studies a variety of examples of and responses to tragedy across literary history from ancient Greece to the present. It aims to help students develop the ability to read tragedies with discernment and comprehension and to understand their conventions and perform critical formal analyses of tragedies as writers adopt and adapt the genre across time. The course assumes that any history of tragedy is at root a history of forms and conventions rather than a comprehensive survey of canonical works and authors. It emphasizes the idea that each tragedy can be approached as an encounter with previous tragedies, whose formal patterns and assumptions it repeats, modifies, or rejects. Likely texts to be covered include: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; William Shakespeare, Hamlet; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Nella Larsen, Passing; Eugene O’Neill, A Long Day’s Journey into Night; Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman; Brian Vaughan, Pride of Baghdad.

Major I: Lower-Division Elective; Major II: Genre Requirement

ENG 207 Shakespeare

Dawson, Brent

Students read, discuss, and critique Shakespeare’s early comedies and tragedies. Plays covered generally include (but are not limited to) A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV (Part One), Richard II, Henry V, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet. Weekly readings and occasional screenings of plays demand a considerable investment of time and effort, in addition to which students will be asked to compose critical essays of varying length, totaling at least 8-10 pages. The course introduces students to central questions in the study of dramatic art, as well as to issues pertaining more broadly to the study of literature in English. Students will leave the course having read extensively from the works of one of the major writers of the western tradition, and they will have acquired interpretive, analytical, and communication skills that will aid them in their future coursework in English and other disciplines.

Gen Ed (A&L); Major I: Shakespeare; Major II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 208 Shakespeare

Bovilsky, Lara

Students read, discuss, and critique Shakespeare’s later comedies and tragedies. Plays covered in ENG 208 generally include (but are not limited to) Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, King Lear, Macbeth, Anthony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, and Othello. Weekly readings and occasional screenings of plays demand a considerable investment of time and effort, in addition to which students will be asked to compose critical essays of varying length, totaling at least 8-10 pages. The course introduces students to central questions in the study of dramatic art, as well as to issues pertaining more broadly to the study of literature in English. Students will leave the course having read extensively from the works of one of the major writers of the western tradition, and they will have acquired interpretive, analytical, and communication skills that will aid them in their future coursework in English and other disciplines.

Gen Ed (A&L); Major I: Shakespeare; Major II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 209 Craft of the Sentence (see ENG 199)

Sayre, Gordon

For winter term Craft of the Sentence is listed under ENG 199. ENG 209 Craft of the Sentence is still in the final process of approval. Once approved, ENG 199 will automatically be converted to appear on student transcripts as ENG 209 Craft of the Sentence.

We will study sentences very closely to see how they work, how the individual parts of speech draw together into syntax, and what effect (artistic and otherwise) these patterns of syntax create. We will explore sentence structures with diagramming, to develop a clear sense of sentence structure, and reflecting upon the artful potential of those sentence elements. In individual projects, pooling observations and ideas in Blackboard discussion, and in-class discussions, we will develop a critical language based in grammar for describing style. Students will study their own sentences and academic writing style in order to gain more artistic and technical control. Throughout, we will reflect on the process of learning and engaging with sentences at this level of detail. Graduate students will complete additional readings and a substantial style project. We may also, perhaps, enjoy the possibilities of English and have some fun with words.

This course will introduce students to literature that depicts ‘the environment’ in various ways: as resplendent landscape, as increasingly industrialized space, as ecologically compromised animal habitat, and as chemically altered agricultural swath. This course will read fiction, nonfiction, and film to explore how environmental depictions use ideas about nature, ecology, farming, and landscape in their representations of space. We will focus largely on how these ideas and depictions intersect with the real and imagined lives of animals. Readings will include works that take us beyond terra firma to see how environments of the air, land, and sea are depicted by writers who at the same time integrate concerns for animal life into their stories. We will finally ask how literary representations of animals ask readers to see the environment as something beyond what can be captured in art, and whether such artistic works nevertheless promote action and care that emerges from these circumscribed depictions.

Major I & II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 243 Introduction to Chicano and Latino Literature

Reyes-Santos, Alai

We will read a variety of Latin@ novels to explore how themes of migration, displacement, race, sexism, class, and homophobia appear within U.S. Latin@ literary traditions.

Gen Ed (A&L); Multicultural; Major I & II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 260 Media Aesthetics

Gopal, Sangita

This course aims to develop your media literacy by providing you with a precise set of critical tools for analyzing moving image texts. Although our primary focus will be on the formal analysis of image and sound rather than media history or social issues, we will study the interplay between artistic and social conventions and the role of ideology in shaping the meaning of media texts. We will view and critique numerous film and television clips, as well as several feature-length films. Online group projects will enable students to shape course content by choosing media clips that illustrate concepts covered by readings and lectures. While not oriented toward the technical or industrial aspects of media productions, the course builds skills that are beneficial to both media producers and consumers.

Major I & II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 260 Media Aesthetics

Miller, Quinn

This course aims to develop your media literacy by providing you with a precise set of critical tools for analyzing moving image texts. Although our primary focus will be on the formal analysis of image and sound rather than media history or social issues, we will study the interplay between artistic and social conventions and the role of ideology in shaping the meaning of media texts. We will view and critique numerous film and television clips, as well as several feature-length films. Online group projects will enable students to shape course content by choosing media clips that illustrate concepts covered by readings and lectures. While not oriented toward the technical or industrial aspects of media productions, the course builds skills that are beneficial to both media producers and consumers.

Major I & II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 266 History of the Motion Picture

Ovalle, Priscilla

This is the second course in a two-term sequence that studies the evolution of cinema as an institution and art form. English 266 continues from the post-war period to the present. The aim of the course is to develop interpretive skills relevant to the study of cinema by examining the history of major movements in Hollywood and world cinema. Such historical developments in cinema have themselves been shaped or influenced by larger social and political events. This confluence means that, rather than merely looking at some movies, we will be investigating the history of the cinema and the history of the world (or at least a few parts of it) as it is reflected through motion pictures.

Gen Ed (A&L); Major I & II: Lower-Division Elective

ENG 280 Introduction to Comic Studies

Gilroy, Andréa

This class is conceived as an introduction to the art of comics, and to the methodologies of the new academic discipline of Comics Studies. Course content will vary from term to term, according to the specialist interests of the individual instructor, within the following parameters. Students will be exposed to a spectrum of comic-art forms (i.e., at a minimum, three of the following archetypal forms: the gag cartoon, the editorial cartoon, the newspaper strip, the comic book, the graphic novel, the web comic.) Students will be exposed to a historical range of comic texts, ranging from (at least) the early 1900s to the present. Students will be required to read several professional critical or theoretical essays over the course of the term alongside the primary materials the instructor of record assigns. These essays will be drawn relevant academic peer-reviewed sources. Scott McCloud’s influential book, Understanding Comics, will be required reading for all versions of the class.

Gen Ed (A&L); Major I & II: Lower-Division Elective; CCSE

ENG 300 Introduction to Literary Criticism

O’Kelly, Brendan

This course introduces you to literary criticism and literary theory. We will examine major modes and schools of criticism—engaging in depth with the theories that inform them—to provide you with a strong background for comprehending contemporary literary studies as an academic discipline and inspire you to view literary and cultural texts through a new set of lenses. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby will serve as a common text for applied readings that exemplify particular modes of criticism, while samplings from philosophers and theorists that range from Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud to Judith Butler and Edward Said will lay out the philosophical grounds for such readings.

Major I: Literary Theory/Criticism: Major II: Theory/Rhetoric

ENG 302 Foundations of the English Major: Theory

Ginsberg, Warren; Kaufman, Heidi; Ovalle, Priscilla

English 302 is one course of a three-course sequence that offers students an introduction to the discipline of English as it is practiced at the University of Oregon, encompassing the broad range of fields, forms, and textual concerns addressed by department researchers. Designed for students beginning the major and for those seriously considering it, the ENG 301, 302, 303 sequence provides a common intellectual experience for majors and a foundation for future studies in English, American, and Anglophone literatures, media, and folklore. A full year of study in the Intro sequence will give a solid background in the history of the different kinds of texts we study, from the Medieval period to the present, as well as in the theory, key debates, and critical reading practices of the discipline. We emphasize these reading and writing strategies not only because they are foundations within the discipline of English, but because they offer a powerful set of interpretive practices that help us to engage with larger humanistic questions being asked beyond the walls of the classroom. The department strongly encourages you to take these courses sequentially. If necessary, you may begin the sequence with ENG 301 or ENG 302 but not with ENG 303.

English 302 orients students to the intellectual rationale behind the English major by presenting the discipline’s history and debates including various modes and approaches to reading texts. This includes introducing students to many of the major methodologies and theories which have informed the genre of literary criticism from its origins up to the present day. Theories covered in this class include philological, biographical, close/textual, feminist, structural, and post-structural approaches; and methodologies which analyze issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. The course also models how these theories work as interpretive tools by showcasing their use in reading the same literary text, an approach which will allow students to compare and evaluate different and sometimes contradictory interpretations of the same material.

This course is organized around three central texts relating to the subject of female authors/subjects; students read these texts alongside essays that model methods of theoretical engagement. For the Medieval section of this course, we will discuss five theoretical approaches to Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale. These include: a new historical reading of the tale, a Marxist interpretation, a psychoanalytic interpretation, a deconstructive reading, and a feminist interpretation. In the Victorian section of this course we will discuss several critical/theoretical approaches to Charlotte Brontë’s, Jane Eyre (1847) from the nineteenth century to the present. The Newer Media component will address narrative theory, cinematic desire, race, gender, and “the gaze” in narrative film using the film(s): Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock 1958), Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992), and Belle (Amma Asante 2013).

Major I & II: Major Requirement

ENG 322 English Novel

O’Fallon, Kathleen

The Victorian period was a time of radical change socially, economically, politically, and scientifically. The resultant excitement, uncertainty, and anxiety of the English people can be found expressed in the works of the country’s greatest and most popular novelists. The novels selected for this course contain memorable characters and complex narratives which give us a dazzling portrait of a nation separating itself from the past, yet not fully embracing the future. Particular emphasis will be placed on authors’ challenges to class and gender distinctions. Texts include Jane Eyre, Lady Audley’s Secret, The Moonstone, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and A Christmas Carol.

Gen Ed (A&L); Major I & II: 1789+

ENG 330 Oral Controversy and Advocacy

Gage, John

In this course we will examine theories of argumentation in the oral mode, and then incorporate those theories into the practice of making effective speeches that advocate for particular positions on arguable issues of public concern. We will analyze and critique oral arguments as they function in the realm of public debate. We will develop in class assessment criteria for effective oral advocacy, and students will be asked to use those criteria to evaluate themselves and their peers.

What is argumentation? What are its central elements, processes, forms, structures, techniques, goals? How does one create or imagine arguments? In this course, we will explore some of the central concepts in rhetoric and argumentation theory, but the major focus will be on practicing argumentation, especially the inventing of arguments. We will use the study of rhetoric and argumentation to support that practice. You will gain a knowledge of some important concepts in rhetoric and argumentation theory, and you will gain skill in discovering the questions that drive controversies and the arguments that can be made on all the different sides of an issue. Be prepared to be called on in class, to think and speak on your feet, to work in groups, to participate in debate, and to learn by practicing and in part by trial and error. Prereq: WR 122 or WR 123.

#Mni Wiconi. #WaterIsLife. #RezpectOurWater. #StandWithStandingRock. #NoDAPL. Since early September 2016, these and other hashtags have exploded onto social media in order to draw attention to non-violent, direct action efforts to end the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline along the Missouri River led by Standing Rock Tribal members, the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation), and a broad coalition of Indigenous and non-Native accomplices. Anchoring their claims to indigenous sovereignty, treaty rights, protections of sacred sites, and international human rights, these “Protectors, not protestors” have demanded that US and state governments, agencies, and law enforcement offices cease investing in fossil fuel infrastructures responsible for climate change and environmental impacts that inequitably target indigenous peoples, communities of color, and the poor. Though located within the geographies, histories, experiences, and ongoing relations specific to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in South Dakota, the Protectors have maintained that their fight is not just about Standing Rock, is not “just an Indian issue,” but one that effects “all our relations” within the Missouri River watershed and beyond, reminding us all that #WaterIsLife and that #WeAreAllDownstream.

Using Standing Rock as an anchor and jumping off point, this course will explore literary and cultural engagements with questions of nationhood, sovereignty, race, environment, and place across a variety of genres and forms, from oral traditions, novels, and plays to films, visual art, video games, and texts that defy generic convention. To give the course focus, we’ll narrow our attention to three specific geographic and historical contexts: 1) Standing Rock, NoDAPL, and Oil Culture; 2) Climate Change and Environmental Crisis in Native Alaska and the Greater North; and 3) Dam Removal, Salmon Restoration, and Resource Allocation along the Klamath River right here in Oregon. As an “active” classroom, we’ll each share in the responsibilities of facilitating course readings and class discussions; participating in online forums and other media exercises; and generating final research/artistic projects shared with the class and the wider campus community near the end of the term. As a literature course with strong historical and secondary reading components, you can expect the course to be reading, writing, and research intensive.

ENG 362 Asian American Writers

Li, David

Reading Asian American texts as a form of cultural representation, the class will be concerned with the following: 1. Where is Asian America? What are its geographical, social, and epistemological boundaries? 2. What is Asian American? Is it a racial concept, cultural construct, biological determinant, historical condition, individual choice, political collectivity or a varying combination of these possibilities? 3. Who are determining the meanings of Asian America or what it means to be Asian Americans? The ideal class will be an engaged intellectual dialogue between students and the professor through interpretations of the assigned texts. We hope to gain both a deeper appreciation of Asian American literature as a means of imagining community and a deeper understanding of language and discourse in the shaping of individual, ethnic, and national identities.

ENG 380 looks at the history of the American film and media industry not just as the sum of its products (i.e., films designed for mass consumption), but also as a complex cultural, economic and aesthetic system that produced complex cultural products. Although literature, for example, also consists of products (of various publishers, authors who write for a living, etc.), it is not an industrial art form on the scale that motion pictures are. From early in its history, Hollywood dominated, and continues to dominate, the world in a way in which no other cultural producer has dominated an industry or art form. This course is about the Hollywood film and its relationship with the American film industry, and about the ways in which Hollywood has historically responded to challenges, whether global, social, cultural or technological. In order to more fully understand the relationship between Hollywood, American culture and its films, this course will emphasize viewing, discussion and analysis. ENG 380 satisfies the Arts and Letters group requirement by actively engaging students in the ways the discipline of film and media studies has been defined by historical inquiry. By examining specific works of American film and media within the historical context of their original production and reception over time, the course will enable students to engage with major issues within the field, including star studies, technology, and censorship.

This course introduces students to critical thinking about the historical and economic factors influencing film, media, and cultural production. Unconventional textual and contextual dynamics, understood as queer history, are the focus of the course. The framework we explore draws on critical approaches to race, ethnicity, class, education, and ability. Our goals are to discuss the power relations and unpredictable signifying practices involved in taste stratification and family norms; erotic possibilities and gender differentiation; art, marketing, advertising, and genre; capitalism, celebrity, censorship, polysemy, and interpretive texts; and the university industrial complex (i.e. socialization through education). We examine fiction, feature film, experimental media, and more. Readings are about the entertainment business, aesthetics and interpretation, and queer transgender culture.

Graphic novels are literary narratives in comic book form. In 1992, Art Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize for his Holocaust narrative Maus and demonstrated that a comic book could also be an important work of literature. Since then, authors have increasingly turned to the graphic novel, especially for exploring family history, global politics, and cultural identity. This course is a survey of 20th and 21st century graphic novels, grounded in cultural theory, ethnic and gender diversity, and political context. Graphic novels include Maus, Fun Home, American Born Chinese, and others.

Aphra Behn (1640?-89) was one of the foremost writers in the late-17th century, a dazzling and original female voice at a turning point in British literary history. We will study Behn’s poetry, drama, and prose and her importance as the early modern world transitioned to the modern. The most produced London playwright of her generation, Behn wrote comedy and tragedy, including The Emperor of the Moon, a comedy that will be staged by the UO Theatre program (Jan/Feb 2017). We will study this work as both text and performance, will attend the play, and will meet the director and actors to discuss the work and the production. Other of Behn’s writing we will read in the seminar will include The Rover, her best-known comedy, various works of lyric and narrative poetry, and examples of her bestselling prose stories as we consider her pivotal role in the development of the novel. Work for the course will include a midterm, a reading and activities journal, a presentation, and a final paper.

Students in this class will read and discuss many of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s major works, including a wide selection of his best short stories, as well as three of his most important novels: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and The Blithedale Romance.

Major I & Major II: 1789+

ENG 413/513 Theories of Literacy

Horton, Kathleen

Theories of Literacy will introduce students to theories, practices, and pedagogies of literacy. An initial and ongoing inquiry will be to determine what we mean by literacy. Are we talking about mastery and manipulation of symbol systems in general? Are we talking about reading and writing in particular? Furthermore, what are the properties of literacy? What are its limitations and expansions? What are the means by which literacy is acquired? What impedes the successful achievement of literacy? What is the relationship of literacy and culture? How do we teach literacy? How do we overcome resistances? Why should we? What about literacy and values? and ethics? and power? We will have much to discuss based on the readings and enriched by the 404/604 community literacy internships required of students as part of this course. Our theoretical discussions will enhance your internships, and your internships will expand our theoretical discussions.

Major I: Literary Theory/Criticism; Major II: Theory/Rhetoric

ENG 423 The Age of Beowulf

Clark, Stephanie

From a hero who commits incest, to an abortion-performing saint, to stories that seem driven by genealogy, the values and forms of medieval literature can often seem inscrutable and strange to modern minds. But this literature is highly rewarding: it represents the rawest of human emotions, and can train its readers to notice and understand ways of thinking alien to that of modern society. This course explores a broad selection of texts from three cultures inhabiting the British Isles in the Early Middle Ages: the Irish, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Danes. The central text in each unit is an epic, the Táin bo Cúailnge, Beowulf, and The Saga of the Volsungs, and we will also read founding myths, religious texts, and shorter poetry (lyric or elegy) from each of these cultures. This class will focus on gaining familiarity with the conventions of a variety of medieval genres and on accessing the concerns of the literature in its context while allowing students room to explore their own thematic interests within medieval literature. In addition, students will receive step-by-step training in literary research.

Major I & II: Pre-1500

ENG 429/529 Old English II

Clark, Stephanie

OEII puts the grammatical concepts learned in OEI to use as we read shorter poems and prose, some famous, some delightfully obscure, in Old English. Adding to students’ knowledge of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture, the course culminates with a reinactment of the Battle of Maldon. OEII will also familiarize students with some of the basic research tools for studying and reconstructing Old English. The final goal of this course is to prepare students to translate Beowulf in the Spring term. Prereq: ENG 428.

Major I & II: Upper-Division Elective

ENG 434/534 Spenser

Dawson, Brent

The end of Spenser’s epic The Faerie Queene describes a character named Nature, whose clothing is decorated with such magnificent variety that, we are told, it cannot be portrayed in words. This course will explore what Spenser means by nature, and how he can imagine it, like that fabric, as filled with endless variation yet created of one basic stuff. We will examine how this sense of nature informs the speaking trees, amorous rivers, and human-animal hybrids depicted throughout the poem; the complex value it grants to sex, emotion, and desire; the extraordinary attention it pays to images, music, and processions; and its fascination with decay, violence, and death. The course will focus on the Shepheardes Calender and 1590 Faerie Queene, with selections from Spenser’s other poetry and prose. We will contextualize Spenser’s poem within changing early modern ideas about science, politics, and poetics. At the end of the term, we will learn about the afterlife of Spenser in debates over the value of literature deemed “romance,” or what we would now call “fantasy.” To that end, we will glance at some fantasy that echoes Spenserian concerns by C.S. Lewis, Miyazaki Hayao, and Neil Gaiman.

Major I & II: 1500-1789

ENG 454/554 English Romantic Writers

Pyle, Forest

This course examines the body of texts and ideas that we have come to call “British Romanticism.” We will read and discuss the most influential literary works of the period: poetry and prose by Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, and the Wordsworths and the Shelleys. And we will consider Romanticism as the source and topic of some of the most important developments in literary and rhetorical theory: the poetic “manifestos” of William Wordsworth and Percy Shelley, the theoretical reflections of Keats and Coleridge. We will also examine Romanticism as the site and prompting of some of our own most pressing contemporary theoretical interests in such areas as ecology, deconstruction, feminism, psychoanalysis, politics, and the avant-garde. Finally, we will consider how the ideas and examples of Romanticism continue to inform our own contemporary models of cultural production.

Major I: 1789+; Major II: 1789+, Theory/Rhetoric

ENG 467/567 American Literature 1900-Present

Wood, Mary

This course will examine American literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a focus on the diversity of voices that made American literature what it was during this period of modernist and post-modernist writing. Looking at a range of genres (novel, short story, essay, poetry, memoir, autobiography, graphic novel), we will consider the ways that American writers engaged with history as they moved towards a future that they saw, from their varying perspectives, as promising, baffling, terrifying, inviting, or impossible. Writers may include Charles Chesnutt, Sherwood Anderson, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, D’Arcy McNickle, Achy Obejas, Julia Alvarez, Alison Bechdel, among others. Prereq: Junior standing

Major I & II: 1789+

ENG 486/586 New Media and Digital Culture

Fickle, Tara

Chess. Sudoku. World of Warcraft. Battleship. Candy Crush. Basketball. Roulette. These are all things we call games – but what exactly do they have in common? This course introduces students to the fundamentals of games as cultural phenomena. Beginning with a seemingly obvious question which has frustrated generations of scholars and theorists – what is a game? – we will go on to examine games in terms of function, purpose, mechanics, design, and audience. Students will learn how to talk about games and also have the opportunity to design their own. This course satisfies the Department’s Theory requirement and may satisfy an elective requirement for the New Media & Culture Certificate.

This course concerns the ways in which persuasive writing and speaking have been theorized and taught in the past. Issues of the power of words, the ethics of persuasive techniques, the relation between eloquence and wisdom, the proper education of the speaker or writer, the relation of logic and reason to emotion and character, and what constitutes appropriate or beautiful expression (to name only a few of rhetoric’s persistent concerns) are treated differently at different times and in different philosophical and pedagogical contexts.

Rhetoric’s relations to poetics and to logic are continually reinterpreted. Among the authors we will read are Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Longinus, St. Augustine, Hildegard of Bingen, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Hobbes, Lamy, Margaret Fell, and George Campbell. Although focusing on the European tradition, we will also look at comparative rhetoric in other traditions, notably Asian and Islamic rhetorical theories.

Major I: Literary Theory/Criticism; Major II: Theory/Rhetoric

Writing and Folklore

WR 320 Scientific and Technical Writing

Boscha, Tina

WR 320 emphasizes the content, form, and style of scientific, professional, and technical writing, including reports, proposals, instructions, correspondence, and the use of graphics and documentation. Students will learn the conventions of discourse in these areas and how they result from different kinds of scientific and technical modes of inquiry. Students will apply this awareness to writing in academic as well as vocational contexts. Prerequisite: Completion of the University Writing Requirement and upper-division standing.

Major I: Upper-Division Elective; Major II: Writing Requirement

WR 321 Business Communications

Upton, Corbett

WR 321 offers practice in writing and analyzing communication common to business, industry, and related professions. Students will develop a critical awareness of the conventions of discourse in these areas and how they result from interpersonal and organizational contexts encountered in these fields. As aspects of such business writing conventions, this course pays close attention to logical development and stylistic and format choices. The knowledge gained is applicable to academic as well as vocational situations. Prerequisite: Completion of the University Writing Requirement and upper-division standing.

Major I: Upper-Division Elective; Major II: Writing Requirement

FLR 225 Voices of Africa

Gilman, Lisa

This course introduces students to life on the African continent through engagement with a variety of expressive forms used by individuals (“voices”) from a number of countries. Novels, music, dance, dress, paintings, films, and political cartoons will serve as primary sources from which students will learn about the diversity and vivacity of contemporary African peoples.

Examines the research questions and theoretical models used by folklorists and other scholars in the study of vernacular religion and popular spirituality. We will examine religion and spirituality as it is “lived,” focusing primarily on beliefs and practices that are informally learned and generally unsanctioned by institutional doctrines and authorities. The course is organized to reflect particular topics and areas of research that have preoccupied folklorists, and we will explore the issues and perspectives that have informed their studies. The role of folklore in peoples religious lives will be explored through the analysis of narratives, rituals, beliefs, customs, celebrations, pilgrimages, trance states, and numinous experiences.

Multicultural ; Major I: FEW; Major II: Media, Folklore, Culture

HUM 240 Medical Humanities

Wood, Mary

What are the meanings of and responses to human suffering in an increasingly globalized world? How are those meanings and responses inflected by race, class, gender, ethnicity, and national identity? How does Western biomedicine define disease and wellness (both now and historically) and how are those definitions imposed on and adapted within the Global South? How have new genetic and reproductive technologies affected medical ethics? What happens when different cultural understandings of disease conflict with one another? How can the arts (literature, visual art, film, music) and philosophy have an impact on medicine and vice versa? How do cultural narratives inform both popular and expert understandings of medicine? This class explores crucial questions about health, well-being, medicine, and social inequality in the twenty-first century, with a particular focus on how narrative works in medical contexts.